Sooke Brewing Company

A group of investors, three of whom are Sooke natives, collaborated to establish a craft brewery located in the town center.  The connection to the local area was partly what drove the group to actualize their dreams of creating craft beer in the area. Sooke brewing was also driven by the desire to create a beer that could be enjoyed by all people, regardless of whether or not they were experienced craft beer connoisseurs.

The 3,500-square-foot building that houses the brewery is situated at 2057 Otter Point Rd.  After the group of friends realized and marveled at the success of the Tofino Brewing Company, they decided to bundle their efforts together in a bid to produce something that would be similarly successful in the community.

Sooke Brewing Company is completely a commercial production brewery that can efficiently brew approximately 1500 liters of beer for each brew.  The brew typically flows into one of the two 30-hectolitre tanks. With the intention of setting the bar high in a market that has already been inundated by craft beer establishments, Sooke brewery has managed to attract and maintain a steady flow of customers, which has also helped to place Sooke on the B.C map.

At first, the brewery focused on the production of draught, with growler fills and keg sales being the main priority at the tasting room. The beers available at the time of opening the brewery in 2016 were a honey brown variety, an IPA, and a Pale Ale.  Whenever possible, the proprietors of the establishment try as much as possible to source local ingredients for the production process. As a matter of fact, the company’s philosophy is to produce amazing locally sourced beer from the West Coast region of the B.C area.

For the future, after attaining the same level of success or greater as some of the other craft beer establishments, Sooke Brewing has big dreams of an expanding to an ocean front restaurant in addition to the brewery.  This is in line with the owners’ vision of wanting to transform the little town of Sooke into a destination of choice for tourists and visitors arriving in BC.  So far, Sooke remains relatively unknown even among other BC provinces and regions, however, the Sooke Brewing Company is bound to change all that.

The man behind the recipes at Sooke Brewing is John Adair; John has had years of experience brewing and working for companies such as Parallel 49 and Gladstone.